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Mother and Child Reunion-ish: This week’s “So THAT just happened on ‘Scandal'” recap

After a slow start on ABC, “Scandal” has become the can’t miss crazy-making hit of the season, with its irresistable intersection of sex, politics, twisted family dynamics, the occasional murder and at least one “WTF?!?” moment in every episode. It’s so twisty and turn-y that even the cast admits to never knowing what the heck they’re gonna find when they open their scripts – Joshua Malina, who plays D.C.’s U.S. Attorney David Rosen, told me earlier this year that he often reads the twisted storytelling of Shonda Rhimes and company and goes “‘OK. So THAT just happened.'”

So when a dear Facebook friend cornered me at an event last week begging me to please write some sort of “Scandal” recap, I obliged, because I love the show and because I usually watch it twice to make sure I didn’t miss anything, because it confuses the crap out of me, too. If you have never watched “Scandal” before, this is not the opportunity to catch you up on several seasons of crazy. Binge watch and come back to me.
Anyway, here’s what our merry band of Gladiators and the people trying to defeat/kill them are up to:

– Olivia Pope: is playing with fire, but isn’t she always? That’s her special gift, and even when she drops it and burns herself or somebody else every once in a while, it never seems to damage those white suits. She’s still suffering through the Sunday dinners with Evil Dad she’s required to endure so that he doesn’t, you know, kill her friends, even though, as she points out, he’s not above making those friends kill people. She’s also representing Josephine Phobe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow), a Congresswoman from Montana who’s running for the Democratic nomination for president. Isn’t Olivia’s tru wuv/bad boyfriend Fitz trying to be president again, too? This could get gross. But Liv doesn’t like being told what to do, to the point where she turns down the offer of Fitz’s evil genius chief of staff Cyrus to come back to work for Fitz. She knows this is a bad idea, which doesn’t stop her from pining for Fitz, who’s facing the prospect of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner without Olivia there to write his jokes. There’s a lot of pining and high school-grade phone calls. Gah, these two. They’re toxic to each other. Pretty and hot. But toxic. As she’s juggling all these balls of fire, she’s unaware of the secret behind-the-scenes digging of…

– Jake and Huck: who, as everybody’s favorite dashing damaged secret assassins, are investigating Operation Remington, a top-secret mission that President Fitz was involved in during his pilot days, and its connection to Evil Dad, who as the head of nefarious government shadow agency B613 has thrown them into a hole or two when they displease them. Jake breaks into his house and comes up with some very interesting information linking the President to Iceland, of all places. All of this digging leaves the regular gladiator work to:

– Abby, Harrison and Creepy Quinn: who are in Red Springs, Montana, the home of Congresswoman Josie, trying to bury the story of her long-given-away baby that she had at 15, while Cyrus’ flunky tries to dig it up. It turns out that the baby was never actually given away and is now Josie’s chief of staff Candice, who was raised as her sister. Because politics is a cruel mistress and an all-around mad, bad and dangerous to know douchebag, the Congresswoman winds up being goaded into talking about her pregnancy during a debate. She admits the baby but not that it’s her “sister,” which wins her the debate but enrages Candice, causing her to fire Olivia. (She tries to hire her back by the end of the episode). Through all this, Abby is trying to juggle her shady life with her relationship with U.S. Attorney David Rosen, Quinn is getting increasingly creepier and death-obsessed, buying a gun and resembling one of the Children Of The Corn. Harrison, meanwhile, still has no personal life. He’s too cute not to have a personal life. Can we do something about this, Ahow? Anyway, the Gladiators’ handiwork is cheesing off:

– First Lady Mellie and Cyrus: who resort to separately begging Olivia to come back to Fitz’s campaign. It’s a particularly humbling turn of events for Melanie, who’s slapped in the bouffant every day with the knowledge that her husband loves Lady O more than he loves her. It’s not even a contest, and I’m sure she’s regretting the day she ever fell for…

-Fitz: who is a big fat whiner. I know Tony Goldwyn’s hot and all, and has excellent hair, but isn’t Fitz every bit of the juvenile indecisive baby that his late Evil Dad told him he was? (He and Olivia have that Evil Dads in common, I guess.) He’s looking like a loser, according to the big-time strategist that First Lady Mellie and Cyrus try to hire for him but who turns them down flat. He’s also making not-so-veiled threats to Olivia’s Evil Dad, who knows all about this Operation Remington and how revealing its truth would blow everything sky high? More than, say, everyone finding out he murdered a Supreme Court justice or that Cyrus killed an intern? Oh, these people. Priorities. His day begins to look up with Olivia hoodwinks Cute Damaged Jake into escorting her to the dinner, where she’s pleased that Fitz is using the jokes she worked out for him. Jake’s day, unfortunately, now sucks, and he tells Olivia that he knows she’s using him and that he’s frankly sick of it, so to get to stepping. Interestingly, it’s not Fitz, but First Lady Mellie she winds up meeting with, so that Mellie can do that aforementioned begging to get Olivia to run his campaign. (Ouch). I don’t care how ambitious she is – I can’t imagine having to tell my husband’s mistress that he can’t breathe when she’s not there. Nope. It appears that she’s accepted, because when Congresswoman Josie comes to try to rehire her, she refuses. But she probably won’t be able to refuse the truth from…

Huck and Jake again: who show up at Liv’s door with some shocking news (as if there’s any other kind on this show!): They’ve figured out that instead of flying an heroic mission in Iraq during Operation Remington, Fitz was in Iceland shooting down a passenger plane, on which one of the passengers was…HER MOTHER.

What?

Follow the Gladiators on Twitter each week for the cast’s live comments! It’s awesome!